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Suzuki India Limited (MSIL), in which an HR manager died and some other
managers as well as workers were injured. The incident was projected by the
mainstream media as an isolated act of horrific violence which was attributed,
even before any investigation to the workers. In this process, the long chain of
events and continuous tension and conflict that preceded the incident and the
truth about the incident itself were obscured. This apparent amnesia that coloured
the understanding of the events of that day entailed grave consequences for the
workers and is causing a continuous miscarriage of justice. The events of 18 July
need to be seen in the context of the persistent struggle of the workers of the
Manesar unit to register a union and draw attention to their working conditions
even as we wait for the trial to conclude.
As reports of severe harassment of Maruti workers and their families trickled in
in late July 2012, Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) undertook a fact
finding investigation into the incident, its context and implications. In the course
of our fact finding, we met the workers (contract, permanent and terminated),
the union leaders, their lawyer as well as officials from the labour department,
Gurgaon, and different police officials, including the Commissioner. All attempts
to meet the management turned out to be futile because it did not give us
appointment for a meeting.
The present report follows in the wake of our two previous reports Hard Drive
(2001) and Freewheelin Capital (2007) which recorded two previous crucial
moments of the labour struggle at Maruti. While the first report documented how
the gains made by workers of the then union started coming under attack, the
second one highlighted the changing composition of the work-force. Both the reports
have clearly established the acts of omission and commission of the state
institutions in favouring the Maruti management.
Even as this report goes to print, the harassment of the workers by the police and
the management is continuing and intensifying. It is of utmost importance,
therefore, to document and publicise the issues at stake and locate the current
situation in the context of workers exploitation and struggle at Maruti.
CHAPTER ONE
The Background
The Maruti Udyog Ltd was established in
Gurgaon in 1981. The company was first
operationalised in 1983 with the rolling out of
the Maruti 800 model. After its launch in India,
the company soon became a symbol of
automobile revolution. For many decades,
Maruti Udyog Ltd. enjoyed virtual monopoly
in the automobile market in India and it still
dominates in small segment cars. Now Maruti
has two manufacturing units, including five
plants in all - the older one at Gurgaon and
another one that started in 2006 at Manesar,
both of which are in Haryana. Marutis Gurgaon
and Manesar plants have a production capacity
of 1.27 million cars per annum. The company
sold over 1.134 million cars in 2011-12.
In 1990, the Congress government led by
Narasimha Rao initiated liberalisation of the
Indian economy. A consensus about the need to
privatise public sector units through
disinvestment was fast emerging across political
parties. In fact during the tenure of the NDA
government (1998-2004), a Disinvestment
Minister was appointed for the first time. For
the disinvestment process to be successful, the
most profitable public sector enterprises needed
to be privatised first. Maruti was one such
company. In 1992, the government reduced its
own shares to 50% allowing the Suzuki Motor
Corporation of Japan to become an equal partner.
As a result, Maruti got converted to a joint sector
company from a public sector company. In 2002,
the Suzuki Motor Corporation had increased its
share to 54.2%. The process of disinvestment
continued and by June 2003, the governments
share had reduced to 18.28% and further down
to 10.27% by February 2006. By the end of 2007,
the Government of India had given up its stake
in the company completely, making it a purely
private company. The Maruti Udyog Ltd was
renamed as Maruti Suzuki India Limited
(MSIL) in September 2007.
The history of Maruti is marked by
exploitation of workers through inhuman
TABLE 1
P ercentage
2001-02
2.24
2002-03
2.52
2003-04
3.3
2004-05
1.8
2005-06
1.97
2006-07
2.01
2007-08
1.99
2008-09
2.31
2009-10
1.88
2010-11
1.94
2011-12
2.4
TABLE 2
2001
2006
3 June 2011
4 June 2011
6 June 2011
17 June 2011
July 2011
14 August 2011
24 August 2011
4 workers suspended
29 August 2011
Management declares that workers can re-enter the plant if they sign
a good conduct undertaking. Only about 20 workers sign it while the
others stay outside.
August-Sept. 2011
September 2011
September 2011
30 September 2011
3 October 2011
7 October 2011
13 October 2011
High Court passes order that workers should vacate factory and
protest outside. Police enters Manesar unit, closes water supply,
canteen, etc. Workers move out and continue protest
17 October 2011
21 October 2011
30 October 2011
November 2011
31 December 2011
31 January 2012
1 March 2012
18 April 2012
May 2012
June-July 2012
16 July 2012
18 July 2012
August 2012
22 August 2012
25 September 2012
October-Nov 2012
Sept 2012 to present Terminated workers organising meetings, appealing to labour court,
trying to agitate for their rights. Some presently employed workers
begin to come for their meetings in Oct-Nov 2012, reprimanded and
intimidated by police and management for doing so. Terminated
workers struggling under the banner of the MSWU, their legally
registered union, are continuously harassed and intimidated by the
Haryana police.
24 January 2013
One of the most active members among the terminated workers, also
a coordinator, Imaan Khan, was arrested and charged with
participating in the incident of 18 July 2012 under the category of
the 500-600 unnamed accused.
CHAPTER TWO
Dehumanisation of Work-force
The years 2011 and 2012 witnessed major
workers unrest and agitation at Marutis
Manesar plants culminating in the July incident
mentioned above. In certain crucial ways, this
has been linked to the organisation of work and
work process at the plants.
If we see the history of labour struggles at
Manesar, high speed of production,
intensification of work emerge as among the
most prominent (Table 2). The Manesar unit
was designed by the company from the outset
to incorporate these elements integrally into its
functioning, and close the possibility of these
labour issues being raised. (See section on
Mechanisation). This structure, design,
employment policy and organisation of
production itself became the context of persistent
labour unrest over the last few years.
INTENSITY AND SPEED OF WORK
During the first 3 years of the existence of
Marutis Manesar unit, 250-300 cars were
produced in a shift. From 2009, the production
was raised to 550-600 cars a shift. The car models
presently being manufactured at Manesar are
AStar, SX4 and Swift Dzire.
One of the distinctive features of all Maruti
plants, which makes the work particularly
strenuous, is the absence of any declared daily
target; the assembly line continues no matter
how many cars are produced. Workers who had
worked in other automobile factories such as
Honda told us that unlike Maruti, they have
fixed daily targets and the assembly line in each
shift stops the minute the target is achieved.
The targets and expected speed of production
were also extremely high. This was one of the
issues taken up by the workers union in 2012.
Prior to that, the assembly line was supposed
to meet the target of one car in every 42 seconds.
Once the union was registered in March 2012,
the pace of work was reduced somewhat to
one car in 50 seconds. High speed production is
not just a feature of the assembly line but also
of the other shops casting, welding, painting,
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on the shop-floor.
SUPERVISORS, MANAGEMENT, WORKERS
The incident that triggered the events of 18 July
2012 involved an altercation and conflict
between a worker and a supervisor. Increase in
tensions in shop-floor relations, particularly
between supervisors and workers is an
inseparable part of the ongoing intensification
of the work regime. Each shop-line in the
Maruti plants has a supervisor. The supervisor
is responsible for ensuring that the targets are
met on the shop-floor and implementing other
decisions of the management. Not surprisingly,
therefore, the supervisors are generally not in
workers favour.
Supervisors are recruited in Maruti through
two routes those who come with diplomas from
outside (for instance a three year Diploma in
Mechanical Engineering (DME) or Diploma in
Automobile Engineering (DAE)), and are
directly recruited; and secondly, those who have
been promoted from the ranks of workers in
the Gurgaon unit. According to workers we met,
the second category of supervisors is drawn
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CHAPTER THREE
The Struggle
The central focus of the labour struggle at
Maruti over the last two years has been the
demand of workers for a genuinely independent
union, one that would address the particular
and general issues of their workplace, the workprocess, the impossible targets and the resultant
everyday violation of their rights by the
management. Prior to mid-2011, workers of the
Maruti Manesar unit were represented by the
Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union (MUKU). This
union was floated and largely controlled by the
management, since 2000. No elections had been
held for the union since then. In 2010, as the
demand for an independent union gathered
momentum at the Manesar unit, the
management announced union elections.
Elections were held on 16 July 2010. A majority
of workers at Manesar boycotted the elections,
maintaining their demand for an independent
union, because they strongly felt that MUKU
would not take up their issues.
On 3 June, 2011, workers submitted an
application to the Labour Commissioners office
in Chandigarh for registration of their own
union. Next day, the management started
pressurising workers to sign an undertaking
stating that they were part of the older union
and were satisfied with it. They were able to
obtain signatures of about 10% of the workers.
The rest of the workers refused to sign the
undertaking and went on a sit-in strike inside
the Manesar unit from 4 June 2011. Workers
from all three shifts joined in. The management
immediately hired goons to intimidate the
striking workers and disconnected the drinking
water supply inside the factory. The workers
continued their protest nevertheless.
Apart from recognition of their union, the
Maruti Suzuki Employees Union, one of the
main demands of the workers was to absorb
the apprentices and contract workers working
in plant A of Manesar unit for many years as
permanent workers into the newly constructed
plant B, instead of appointing new contract
workers. On 6 June 2011, eleven workers were
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CHAPTER FOUR
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AFTERMATH
Arbitrary action by the management
The incident gave the management an
excuse to deploy security forces in large
numbers, when the plant reopened in endAugust. This was done to create an atmosphere
of terror, where no one would dare to voice their
dissent.
While the role and culpability of individual
workers (and managers) in the incident should
be investigated, it is very clear that the
management has used it to target and dismiss
the workers it was uncomfortable with. In all,
546 permanent workers and about 2000 contract
workers and apprentices were terminated for
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FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
The terminated workers are continuing to
carry forward their struggle against all odds
under the banner of the MSWU. They continue
to get the support of those who are still working
in the plant. They are engaged in a tough battle,
full of challenges, where they also have to deal
with the court cases of the arrested workers
and have to live in constant tension of being
implicated and arrested any time. With the
entire union body in jail, the provisional
committee is actively taking up the issue of the
illegal termination of workers, arbitrary arrests
and in general, the state-management-police
nexus. Needless to say, all are being met with
a heavy hand so as to break the morale of the
workers.
Some of the developments since the immediate
aftermath are:
y On 17 August 2012 thousands of workers
from across unions and industrial units
united in a mass protest against the
decision of the Maruti management to
sack its employees. The workers gathered
at the Mini-Secretariat and submitted a
memorandum demanding reinstatement
of 500 employees. Trade unions
questioned the move by the Maruti
Suzuki management and asked whether
it had sought the statutory prior
permission from the Haryana
government before resorting to such
mass-scale termination.
y In a rare and impressive show of
solidarity and joint action, over 150
workers in judicial custody, all workers
inside the Manesar unit and over 500
workers went on a two-day hunger strike
on 7-8 November 2012 outside the MiniSecretariat in Gurgaon. Many local
workers unions and those from other
parts of India also supported the
event. The main demand was the
reinstatement of the 546 terminated
workers.
But barely had the programme started
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CHAPTER FIVE
Conclusion
The tagline used by Maruti Suzuki India
Limited to describe itself in its annual reports
and advertisements implies that Maruti is a
Way of Life. The car and the company are
believed to symbolise the pride of India, i.e., it
is much more than simply a car or any other
car company and this is an idea that is
seemingly shared by the media and large
sections of people. It enjoys close to 40% of the
market share in the passenger vehicle category.
The companys annual report in 2012, presented
this relationship of customers with Maruti
wrapped in the language of love, literally
making Maruti the source of fulfilment of even
the unstated desires of its customers:
"Customers relate to a company in
multiple ways. They expect the company to
serve them with care and fulfill their
desires, including unstated ones.when a
company is able to do this over time a
relationship is born. . The millions of
families we have connected with offer their
trust and faith in us.Thisalso has an
element of the unconditional a near total
acceptance and trust in what we do. Their
relationship with Maruti Suzuki, we like to
think, has evolved to love." (Annual Report
2012, Maruti Suzuki India Limited)
The claims of the company regarding its
relationship with its customers may or may not
be true, but it is abundantly clear from this
report, that it certainly does not extend the
same love and care to its workers. Close beneath
the surface of this relationship of love and way
of life lies a history of coercion, denial of basic
rights and the dehumanisation of labour by the
company.
The violent incident of 18 July 2012 at
Marutis Manesar unit was most unfortunate,
not only because Mr Awanish Dev lost his life,
but also because it completely derailed the
workers struggle at the unit and has been
maliciously used by the company, government
and the media to malign the workers. After the
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Background
Dehumanisation of work-force
The struggle
The incident and its aftermath
Conclusion
2
10
22
27
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Tables
II Timeline of Developments and labour Stuggle at Maruti 7
Boxes
40
2 Human Robots 1
3 Illusion of pay revision
4 Human Robots 2
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16
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DRIVING FORCE
Labour Struggles and Violation of Rights
in Maruti Suzuki India Limited
A PUDR Report
May 2013
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As we go to print
On 26 April, 2013, the workers of MSIL (Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.)
were still continuing their several months old struggle and were on
dharna in Kaithal for their legitimate demands as has been stated
in this report.
That very day the Financial Express reported that MSIL has made a
net standalone profit of Rs1,147.5 crores. This marks 79.4 per cent
increase in profit, in the quarter ending on the 31 March. The net
profit of the company during the corresponding period last year
stood at Rs.639.8 crore.
The numbers of cars sold during the same period, i.e., from January
to March 2013, had gone down by 4.6 per cent. According to the
management, the profit still rose due to the higher sales of new
models as Ertiga, Dzire and Swift, cost reduction and localization
efforts, and the benefit of a favourable exchange rate.
In the cobweb of managerial explanations of profit the workers,
their back-breaking and mind numbing labour are not visible at all.
It is obvious that in times when the costs of all inputs have
increased, the reduction in labour costs is contributing
substantially to the profits of the company.
The workers are still there - on a dharna - fighting against police
torture, incarceration, illegal terminations, unfair labour practices,
and for fair and just treatment by the powers that be.
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